Pope Francis met with Abdullah Kurdi in Erbil, Iraq on March 7, 2021. Credit: Vatican Media.
Rome Newsroom, Mar 7, 2021 / 11:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis met Sunday with a father who lost his wife and two children in a shipwreck as Syrian war refugees.
Abdullah Kurdi was one of the thousands of people in the crowd at the pope’s stadium Mass in Erbil, Iraq on March 7.
The haunting photo of his son, Alan Kurdi, made headlines around the world in 2015. The photo showed the three-year-old’s tiny body laying face down on a Turkish beach after he drowned trying to cross the Aegean Sea.
Kurdi was one of only four people to survive after a dinghy carrying 16 refugees making the perilous journey from Turkey to the Greek Island of Kos capsized. His other son Ghalib and his wife, Rehanna, also died in the shipwreck.
During their encounter after the Mass in Erbil, Pope Francis told the father that the Lord participated in his suffering, according to a statement from the Holy See Press Office.
“The pope spent a long time with him and with the help of the interpreter he was able to listen to his father’s pain for the loss of his family and to express his profound participation and that of the Lord in the suffering of man,” it said.
Kurdi, a Syrian of Kurdish ethnicity, now lives in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region.
The Vatican said that the father thanked the pope for his words of closeness to his tragedy and to that of many migrants who risked their lives to leave their country.
Pope Francis is known for speaking out on behalf of the suffering of refugees. The week of the death of Kurdi’s family, the pope made an appeal to parishes and religious communities to welcome refugees in his Angelus address on Sept. 6, 2015.
“Faced with the tragedy of tens of thousands of refugees fleeing death from war and hunger … the Gospel calls us, asks us to be close to the smallest and most abandoned,” Pope Francis said.
The pope also gave a statue depicting Kurdi’s young son to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) headquarters during a visit in 2017.
Kurdi set up a foundation with his sister Tima, the Alan and Ghalib Kurdi Foundation, which raises money in support of refugee children.
In past years, the two siblings spent the anniversary of the shipwreck distributing clothes and supplies to children living in refugee camps.
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Pope Francis meets with executives and employees of the Istituto Nazionale della Previdenza Sociale, Italy’s main welfare agency, April 3, 2023. / Credit: Vatican Media
Rome Newsroom, Apr 3, 2023 / 09:00 am (CNA).
Pope Francis has urged Italy’s main welfare agency not to forget the contribution of foreign workers.
“It should not be forgotten that foreign workers who do not yet have Italian citizenship also contribute to the pension system,” the pope said in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace on April 3.
“It would be a good sign to be able to express gratitude to them for what they do,” he said. “Social security also reminds us that ‘everything is connected’ and that we are interdependent on each other.”
Francis met 400 employees of the Istituto Nazionale della Previdenza Sociale, better known as INPS, to mark the institution’s 125th anniversary.
INPS is the main welfare agency of the Italian public pension system. It serves more than 42 million people, providing retirement pensions and other state welfare such as social security, maternity leave, disability benefits, and workers’ compensation.
“Social life stands because of supportive community networks,” Pope Francis said. “The common good passes through the daily work of millions of people who share the principle of the bond of solidarity among workers.”
He acknowledged Italy’s aging population as he urged the agency to promote dignified, stable work and to fight illegal labor.
The pope appealed to them “to guard a welfare system that is up to the challenges of societies that, like Italy’s, are growing older and older.”
Pope Francis meets with executives and employees of the Istituto Nazionale della Previdenza Sociale, Italy’s main welfare agency, April 3, 2023. Credit: Vatican Media
Dignified work “is always ‘free, creative, participatory, and supportive,’” he said, quoting the apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium.
“Welfare is a form of participation in one’s own and others’ well-being,” he continued. “Setting aside economic resources and ensuring access to health care are valuable assets that can hold together the different seasons of life.”
INPS Director General Vincenzo Caridi said Monday’s meeting was a chance to listen closely to Pope Francis “at a time when the sphere of social work and closeness to the least is (in continuity with the great pontificates that have confronted the challenge of modernity) the cornerstone of his message.”
Caridi said “the tree of the welfare state is nourished by many cultural roots, among them certainly the social doctrine of the Church. His is an invitation, a spur which gives strength to all employees of the Institute — believers and nonbelievers alike — who are called to renew the spirit of service with which they carry out their daily commitment.”
In his speech, Pope Francis used two stories from the Bible to illustrate both a good and a bad model of welfare.
A “bad welfare,” the pope said, is like the greedy man in the parable from the Gospel of St. Luke who builds a bigger warehouse to hold all of his crops, planning to rest, eat, drink, and enjoy himself, “but God said to him, ‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’”
“Those who accumulate only for themselves end up deluding themselves,” Francis said.
An example of “good welfare,” instead, is that of the patriarch Joseph, he said.
As governor of Egypt, Joseph ordered that some grain be put aside from the abundance in order to be prepared for the future, when there may be a period of famine.
“Joseph not only trusts in God’s providence and recognizes it, but [he also] shows foresight for the good of the people,” Francis explained. “He knows how to look forward; he envisions good even when evil seems to prevail; he cares for the people entrusted to him. And this is your vocation: taking care of people in the future.”
Vatican City, Feb 4, 2021 / 01:00 pm (CNA).- Human fraternity is “the challenge of our century,” Pope Francis said on Thursday, as he marked the first International Day of Human Fraternity together with the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Ahmed el-Tayeb.
“Either we are brothers, or, allow me to say, everything will fall apart,” the pope said during an online event on Feb. 4. “This is the challenge of our century. It is the challenge of our times.”
Francis spoke about the importance of human fraternity during a 40-minute online meeting organized by the Higher Committee for Human Fraternity in collaboration with the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.
“Fraternity means to lend a helping hand. Fraternity means respect. Fraternity means listening with an open heart. Fraternity means defending our own convictions because there is no true fraternity if one’s own convictions have to be negotiated,” the pope said.
“This celebration responds to a clear call that Pope Francis has been making to all humanity to build a present of peace in the encounter with the other,” Cardinal Miguel Ángel Ayuso Guixot said before the event.
Ayuso, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, said, “these meetings are a way to achieve true social friendship, as the Holy Father asks of us.”
Speaking after Ahmed el-Tayeb, Pope Francis emphasized that “either we are brothers or we destroy each other. There is no time for indifference now.”
“A world without brothers is a world of enemies,” he continued. “I would like to underline this. We can’t say ‘brothers or not brothers.’ We have to say ‘brothers or enemies’ because the difference is a very subtle form of enmity.”
“We do not need to be at war to be enemies. Disregarding each other is enough…” he said.
During the event, António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, and Latifa Ibn Ziaten, a French-Moroccan activist, were given the Zayed Award for Human Fraternity.
The two were chosen for the award by an independent jury established by the Higher Committee for Human Fraternity.
Ibn Ziaten is a Muslim and the mother of Imad Ibn Ziaten, the first service member killed by Mohammed Merah during a series of Islamist terrorist attacks he committed in Toulouse and Montauban, France, in 2012.
Pope Francis praised Ibn Ziaten’s strength and the “conviction embodied in pain, in your wounds.”
“Only a mother knows what it is to lose a child,” he said. “Through your pain, you bring yourself to say, ‘we are all brothers,’ and to sow seeds of love. Thank you for your testimony and thank you for being a mother to your son and to so many boys and girls. For being a mother of this humanity that is listening and learning from you the path of fraternity.”
The pope also addressed Guterres, thanking him for his efforts towards building peace. “We will only achieve peace with a fraternal heart. Thank you for what you are doing,” he said.
Guterres has been U.N. Secretary-General since 2017. He served as Prime Minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002 and U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees from 2005 to 2015.
A Catholic, Guterres recorded a video message with Pope Francis in December 2019, in which the two leaders underlined the importance of religious freedom, human dignity, and environmental protection.
Michelangelo’s The Creation of Eve, from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, c. 1510. / null
Denver, Colo., Nov 15, 2022 / 09:00 am (CNA).
Michelangelo’s artistic masterpiece in the Sistine Chapel broke new ground in portraying the dynamic creative acts of God, but his work also depicts the combined importance of men and women through all of sacred history, art historian Elizabeth Lev has said.
“The spirit of artistic adventure led the artist to experiment with a completely new vision of creation,” Lev said Nov. 12. “He took a book that had been painted, sculpted, mosaiced, and illuminated over and over again in the history of art and created something completely new.”
She spoke at the closing keynote Saturday evening at the fall conference of the University of Notre Dame’s de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. Lev teaches at the Rome campus of Duquesne University and the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas. Her speech, “Creation, Complementarity, & St. John Paul II in Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling,” focused on one of the key artistic treasures of Vatican City.
The 16th-century Florentine artist Michelangelo was commissioned by Pope Julius II to paint the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling and the upper section of its walls. This was the artist’s focus from 1508 to 1512. He later finished the Last Judgment above the chapel altar from 1535 to 1541.
The ceiling frescoes show the creation of the heavens and the earth, the creation of Adam and Eve, their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the great flood, and the rebirth of humankind through Noah.
Lev cited St. John Paul II’s description of Michelangelo’s work in his poem “Meditations on the Book of Genesis at the Threshold of the Sistine Chapel.”
“It is the book of the origins — Genesis,” the pope said. “Here, in this chapel, Michelangelo penned it, not with words, but with the richness of piled-up colors. We enter in order to read it again, going from wonder to wonder.”
Lev reflected on the first three panels depicting the creation of the world. These show “the mighty dynamic figure of God the Father at work.”
“It’s not what God creates, it’s that God creates,” she said. Michelangelo broke ground in portraying God as “physically engaged in creation.” For Lev, this offers “a preview of the Incarnation.”
Turning to Michelangelo’s famous depiction of the Creation of Adam, Lev noted that the artist depicts “just God and the creature formed in his likeness.” Adam is shown as “somewhat listless” in contrast with God’s energy. Adam is “sentient and awake but he has no will or strength or purpose to rise,” she said. “He looks completely passive and dependent despite that incredibly beautiful form.”
“It’s God who reaches towards man,” she continued. For Lev, the outstretched finger of God makes the viewer “almost lean forward in his seat waiting for that final Act of Creation, the divine spark, the Breath of Life that will release that latent energy and allow Adam to take his place as the greatest of creations.”
“This is the joy in humanity that permeates the Renaissance,” Lev said.
Michelangelo’s The Fall and Expulsion from Paradise from the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel (1508-12).
There is academic debate over a female figure shown in the Creation of Adam. As God the Father stretches out one arm to Adam, his other arm curls around a female figure. Some have identified this figure as Wisdom, some as Mary.
Lev suggested it is best to identify this figure as Eve, both because the figure provides visual balance to Adam and because her gaze “connects her more intimately with Adam.”
The creation of Eve from Adam, depicted next on the chapel ceiling, shows Eve emerging from Adam’s side with her hands clasped in prayer, an image of the Church and the personification of Mary, the “Second Eve.”
Lev cited St. John Paul II’s 1999 homily inaugurating the newly restored Sistine Chapel, after centuries of grime and soot were removed. The pope called the chapel the “sanctuary of the theology of the human body,” alluding to his catecheses offered from 1979 to 1984. The pope suggested that Michelangelo allowed himself to be guided by the Book of Genesis’ depiction of mankind in Eden: “the man and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame.”
Before the fall, Lev commented, Michelangelo depicted Adam and Eve in the state of grace as “two of his most beautiful figures.”
“They are filled with dynamism. They’re buoyant. They’re luminous,” Lev said, adding that their bodies “suggest immortality.” After the fall, however, both of their bodies “lose their luminosity” and appear heavier, like a burden. Adam’s shoulder seems to force Eve into the background, “subjugating her.”
For Lev, the artistic depiction of the genealogy of Jesus Christ also deserves attention. The portrayal of the ancestors of Jesus Christ shows “a genealogy of men and women struggling from generation to generation.” These figures seem “more approachable” and “much more similar to candid family photographs.” Even though 22 women in Jesus’ genealogy are not named, Michelangelo pairs them with their husbands.
Lev noted that Michelangelo broke with artistic convention both by including mothers and by showing them as busy, everyday women “tending to toddlers, toilettes, and tasks.” His style of painting them with “incredible immediacy” adds observations of human nature: Eleazar’s wife holds the purse strings and the key to the house, and her husband looks “startled” as she surveys their son. Other depictions are “tender and intimate,” like the portrayal of the wife of Manasseh, who cradles a swaddled son while rocking an infant’s cradle.
Here, Lev drew on John Paul II’s 1995 “Letter to Women.” He wrote that womanhood and manhood are complementary at the physical, psychological, and even ontological level.
“It is only through the duality of the masculine and the feminine that the human finds full recognition,” the pope said. “To this unity of the two, God has entrusted not only the work of procreation and family life but the creation of history itself.”
Lev noted that the passing of generations “necessarily emphasizes the begetting of children.” This means that the complementarity of the sexes is essential for a population to form and for creation to continue.
In Michelangelo’s portrayal of the Last Judgment, the artist still looks back to creation but also breaks new ground. He placed Mary next to Christ, as “a foil to Christ’s sternness.”
“She is the picture of mercy gazing down towards the elect, placed by the wound in Christ’s side whence the Church sprang,” Lev said. “Mary is transfigured into the Bride of Christ, for whom he gave his life and to whom he cannot say no. She is the conduit to Christ, as Eve was the link between God and man in the creation of woman.”
For Lev, the Sistine Chapel shows the “incredible gift of creation” from the beginning of the world down through the generations, “through which all of us today are a part of that continuation of creation.”
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